[wideawake]

Grant knew that in a stand up fight he could not compete with the Southern frame of mind and leadership in battle.

What a load of garbage.

To quote Grant from Shiloh: "Lick 'em tomorrow."

Grant had plenty of stand-up fights against Southern armies and generals and won most of them.

Grant did not buy into the Southern mystique at all, which is one of the reasons why he defeated the Confederacy's greatest captain.

Cold Harbor was indicative of that.

Do you even know anything about the Battle of Cold Harbor?

Far from being a stand-up fight, it was an assault by Grant against a Confederate army that was so well entrneched behind fortifications that Gordon Rhea - probably the expert on the Overland campaign - describes Lee's fortifications as the most brilliant defensive line built during the war.

The Union prevailed in the hand-to-hand fighting that occurred after the Union managed to smash through part of the defenses - but were slaughtered by the well-covered Confederate artillery emplacements that commanded the entrenchments they broke through.

He kept attacking so the South would break, which it never did

Of course the Confederacy did.

Grant cornered Lee in Petersburg, and then Lee, no longer able to defend Petersburg, made a run for it. Grant tracked him down and two weeks later Lee surrendered.

and made him realize he could only win by continuing to bleed off manpower.

He won the campaigns after Cold Harbor quite decisively, and not by bleeding off his own men, but by whittling Lee's force down to almost nothing.

He had the logistics and men to throw in, the South was running out.

When the Petersburg Campaign began Grant had 62,000 effectives and Lee had 42,000.

At Antietam McClellan had 87,000 effectives and Lee had 45,000.

Grant did a lot more with far fewer men than his predecessors, while Lee's numbers were not much smaller than they were two years before.

Grant's logistics were no better than McClellan's. Numbers and logistics did not finish Lee.

Grant and his leaner-and-meaner-than-McClellan's Army of The Potomac did.

[Pistolshot]

The breakthrough came on the 2nd day, or June 1st if you will. It was thrown back. After that, the South had time to prepare defenses, especially with all the delays of renewed attacks by Grant. Those were not his fault, but that of the commanders in the field who went the wrong way or made a wrong turn at a crossroads. By the time they got into positions they had been on the march for most of the night and the attack didn't begin until the next morning.

That failed misrably, the firing so heavy, men in the field had to dig makeshift fox holes with bayonets and tin cups. Thousands more wounded died in those fields because the whithering fire was so intense they could not be recovered.

The South did not break at Cold Harbor after the 1st. Grant took 12,000 casualties there, the South 4,000 or so.

Little Mac was a newspaper general. One who wanted fame without fighting and when he did, he made excuses for losing. Grant was nothing like Little Mac.

Grant had good interior lines, the railroads to move men/material where he needed them, good communications with his commanders, who didn't have good comprehension. Grant didn't care what the newspapers said or how he was portrayed. He didn't look like a general officer, much less act like one. He knew how to fight, and that is all Lincoln wanted.

[donaldo]

Yeah, right on all points. Grant naturally would take more casualties when on the offensive which was what his strategy was all about. He was the attacker. Lee suffered just as many casualties when on the offensive; eg., Malvern Hill, Gettysburg, etc. Grant won that war, period. He had the same numerical and material superiorities as Hooker, Burnside, McClellan, et.al., but he won, they didn’t. He was miles and miles beyond them. For an example of his leadership check out Porter’s initial chapter in Campaigning With Grant. He almost singlehandedly brought victory from chaos at Chattanooga, as indeed, he did elsewhere. Before Grant the Union forces were likened to a balky mule team. After Grant, they moved in concert and toward a common goal. To Sherman, Grant had all the tenacity of a Scottish Terrier. I don’t deny that Grant made mistakes. There was nothing pompous about him. His prose was as Spartan as his demeanor, eg., to Meade, “Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.” He also had a sense of humor. He once noted that one of his officers who was balding took special care to comb the hair on the back of his neck forward to cover his bare pate. Grant: “I see you have the rearguard doing picket duty at the front!” Sublime! Once again, I’m a Rebel born and bred but simple fairness compels my admiration for Grant. A very great man.